Intervention

Abstract

For millennia people have struggled to understand the distressing, debilitating and sometimes tragic experience we refer to as ‘mental illness’. Archaeologists have uncovered ancient human remains with holes intentionally drilled into their skulls, a procedure now known as trepanning. One explanation for this phenomenon is that it served as an early form of psychosurgery, with the hole drilled to release insanity-inducing spirits (Brothwell, 1963).